In the wake of Scott Brown’s big Senate win in Massachusetts, attention is shifting to other races around the country where the GOP could potentially pick up new seats. In Illinois Tuesday, Republicans chose Mark Kirk as their nominee for the Senate seat that was Barack Obama’s springboard to the White House. He stands a good chance of retaking that seat for the Republicans, but that road won’t be easy.
At a gut level we tend to like politicians with an independent streak. Guys like Teddy Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, and John McCain didn’t become household names by carefully calibrating public opinion before deciding what to think. Though in principle our representatives are supposed to represent us, that elusive quality of leadership is what makes one political figure stand out from the crowd.
With the fundamentalist wave in the GOP sliding into its paranoid phase; aggressively purging dissidents and enforcing a paranoid uniformity of thought, the Party is struggling to find leadership personalities with the stones to buck the trend, and a rational vision to bring us all together. Mark Kirk offers a lot of benefits to the Party. He could add to the GOP’s nascent resurgence in the North and demonstrate how we can win in urban areas. Kirk could also add some ideological diversity to the Party. But he is not going to be our new Maverick.
Mark Kirk certainly defies labels. He is a Republican House member from an urban, Democratic-leaning district on Chicago’s North Shore. His military resume includes service with Naval Intelligence in Haiti and Kosovo.  He recently completed a tour on active duty in Afghanistan while serving in Congress.
He was raised in the wealthy Chicago suburb of Kenilworth and went on to study at Cornell, the London School of Economics, and the National University in Mexico City. He received a law degree from Georgetown.
He’s not dumb.
Kirk is deeply unpopular with the fundamentalist wing of the Republican Party in large part because of his strong pro-choice commitment. He has angered the right wing of the Party on numerous other issues, but rather than make a solid case and stick with it, he consistently apologizes, equivocates, and hedges on those points. He even made a pathetic effort to get Sarah Palin to endorse him, a surreal move since there is no way she would do it (she did not), and it would be unlikely to help him at all in Illinois.
In short, Kirk hasn’t decided where he is going to stand.  In the charged environment of the current GOP civil war, this is a dangerous problem.
He supported the House’s legislation on Cap and Trade, but in his Senate campaign he has repudiated that vote. His explanation, given in an interview to an Illinois Tea Party organization, is bizarre. He claims that the House bill was “good for his district,†but in representing the state as a whole he would oppose it.  Why? Because Cap and Trade is bad for Illinois. It’s not clear to me how the North Shore is more vulnerable to global warming than the rest of the state. That answer has the odor of political cynicism.  Kirk is engaging in this type of awkward pandering on issues all the way up and down the Party platform.
The climate is right for a Republican to win the Senate seat in Illinois. To pull this off, Kirk will have to finally carve out an authentic identity.  Unless he finds one soon, he is likely to be torn to pieces between the rambunctious far-right and a determined Democratic opponent. A win in Illinois would be a fine prize for the Party. Let’s hope that in coming days we see more of Mark Kirk the independent-thinking Maverick and less of the waffling, equivocating Chameleon.
Email this post
